Whether it’s calluses, osteoarthritis, or the “phone pinky,” our hands tell a story and can reveal a lot about the lives we live and the daily items we use. But what about the hands of our ancient human relatives?According to a new study, published in Science Advances, two hominin fossil hands showed surprising bone structure and added complexity to the story of human evolution.“This work offers yet more evidence that human evolution is not a single, linear transition from upright walkin ...read more

In recent decades, researchers have consistently explored new ways to tackle the global obesity epidemic. While existing methods show significant results, such as the dramatic, long-term weight loss from bariatric surgery or the flexible, non-invasive use of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, each approach has its drawbacks. Surgery can be risky and irreversible, while medications often bring unpleasant side effects and a risk of regaining weight once treatment stops.But what if we could combi ...read more

There’s now data to back up the theory that stressful events like the loss of a loved one can change your heart’s physiology and contribute to atrial fibrillation, heart attacks, and stroke, among others. Researchers followed nearly 200,000 U.S. adults over five years and report that such instances were “high and unchanged” from 2016 to 2020, according to a research article in the Journal of the American Heart Association.Read More: Why Are We Addicted to Love?Stress Can Change Your Hear ...read more

Prostate cancer is one of the primary health scares for aging men, but thankfully, improved testing could soon be on the way. A simple spit test that can be taken at home is among the most promising methods for detecting prostate cancer, which an estimated 1 in 8 men are diagnosed with during their lifetime. In an April 2025 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers demonstrated the success of calculating prostate cancer risk from saliva. The study showed that a spit t ...read more

Fine soil particles once encased in ice were discovered in a cave about 20,000 years after the frozen sheet melted. This sediment is significant both for what it tells us about the past and what it could forecast for the future, according to an article in the journal Nature Geoscience.The sediment found in an Alaskan cave was likely once part of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which melted at the end of the last Ice Age. Most of that ice — along with the sediment contained within it — ended up in ...read more

Australia and South America weren’t always so separate. At one time, many millions of years ago, these two continents were connected, along with others, in the southern supercontinent of Gondwana. Gondwana was a warm, forested place — a perfect home for tree frogs. In fact, the supercontinent fostered the common ancestor of the Australian pelodryadid frogs and the South American phyllomedusid frogs that are still seen, stuck to leaves and branches, today. But when did this common tree frog a ...read more

If you’ve stayed in a bath or pool long enough, you’ve likely noticed your skin, especially your fingers, become wrinkly or pruny. This is caused by your blood vessels contracting. When blood vessels narrow, the skin’s area is reduced, and your skin forms wrinkles. While your pruny fingers may seem off-putting, this evolutionary advantage actually helps you grip things easier underwater, compared to non-pruny hands. However, as your fingers wrinkle underwater, do they always wrinkle in th ...read more

A sandstone slab imprinted with clawed footprints could mean that four-legged animals (tetrapods) transitioned from sea to land 35 million years earlier than previously thought. That finding of the earliest known clawed footprints — in Australia, by amateur paleontologists — may have major evolutionary implications, according to a paper in the journal Nature."I'm stunned," Per Ahlberg, a researcher from Uppsala University and an author of the paper, said in a press release. "A single track-b ...read more

NASA’s Magellan mission is one of the most successful deep space missions of all time. The spacecraft provided the first and most complete image map of the surface of Venus, and the most comprehensive and detailed data of the planet’s gravity and surface.Although the original mission launched in 1989, the data collected is still helping scientists with new discoveries. Recently, a team used the archival Magellan data to find evidence that tectonic activity is happening below Venus. This acti ...read more

Monitoring wastewater for traces of infectious diseases is giving this human byproduct a powerful new role in public health. Once used decades ago to detect poliovirus, wastewater-based epidemiology reemerged during COVID-19 and is now proving useful again in tracking measles outbreaks before cases are officially reported.A recent study led by researchers from Baylor College of Medicine, UTHealth Houston, the Houston Health Department, and Rice University showed that measles virus was detected i ...read more